Volbeat frontman Michael Poulsen recently launched his new death metal band Asinhell, though Poulsen himself is no stranger to the genre. Poulsen used to front a death metal band called Dominus between 1991 and 2000, making Asinhell is more of a homecoming than an exploration.
In an interview with Blabbermouth, Poulsen named the five death metal albums he'd take with him to a desert island and he's got some pretty good picks! They are:
- Death's Spiritual Healing
Poulsen also elaborated on his love of Death, and how the mighty Chuck Schuldiner inspired Asinhell.
"[Death is] definitely one of the main influences and ingredients. It's not a secret that everyone in Asinhell worships the mighty Chuck Schuldiner. He took it to the next level. There will always be, I guess, a conversation about who started Death metal. Was it Possessed? Was it Mantas who became Death? If we look at Possessed's Seven Churches, they planted the Death metal riffing seed. Even though there are Death metal riffs on Seven Churches, it also has a lot of thrash. When Chuck formed Death, he made it one-hundred percent, full-blown Death metal. He took the sound a step further. The way of growling, getting a deeper voice and digging into obscure lyrics — you can say Chuck is the main guy when we talk Death metal but got a little help from Possessed.
"It was interesting to follow Death's development. On Scream Bloody Gore, you can hear a lot of innocence, like the funny lyrics inspired by horror and gore movies. It's more fun than it is serious. It has its spirit and sound, but you can already hear when Chuck did Leprosy, like, 'Okay, alright.' The sound wasn't getting 'clean', but they controlled their instruments more. Suddenly, there was structure. There were hooks, bridges and choruses. You could hear Chuck develop into a great songwriter.
"Then, in the next step with Spiritual Healing, the songs' structure got even stronger. Even the lyrics were like, 'Okay. Chuck is getting serious now. Now some subjects are relevant to society.' You were not used to hearing stuff like that. For each Death record, he took it to the next level. Chuck and Death have always inspired me. I always find being inspired by Death when I had Dominus and even when I'm writing in Volbeat. Maybe that's something people could see between the lines. It's definitely there in Asinhell."
Asinhell will release their debut album Impii Hora on September 29. Pre-orders are available here.
